Contents:

- Local Concert Feature Info: Thrive Music Live with Duo Cortona, playing Botticellian Trees, Jan. 4, 2020 at 8pm

- Concert Info: To Celebrate The Need: New Vocal Music by Peter Dayton, Feb. 22, 2020 at 8pm

- Stay Tuned: Peter appears on a new podcast: "Pause & Listen" - release date Winter 2020

- Tease of Upcoming Projects

Dear Friends,

I hope everyone is having a safe and warm winter season. There are a lot of exciting updates for this blog post – details firming up for items I have hinted at in previous posts, so get out your calendars, because this is going to be a busy season!

Speaking of calendars, my boyfriend, the fine artist Douglas Johnson, is selling 2020 calendars with images of his beautiful landscape paintings, some of which have been painted during our road trips. He is selling them for $25 – they make great gifts during the holidays! Thank you for indulging me in this plug and you can contact either me or him through his website dougjohnsonart.com if you are interested in purchasing a calendar.

Thrive Music Live with Duo Cortona, playing Peter's Botticellian Trees, Jan. 4, 2020 at 8pm

The Mid-Atlantic-based Duo Cortona is bringing their beautiful sound to Baltimore to put on a concert of music for the unique ensemble of mezzo and violin. In addition to Peter’s Botticellian Trees: Four Songs on texts by William Carlos Williams, Rachel Calloway and Ari Streisfeld will present this dynamic program of music without intermission:

Sappho Cycle, Robert Morris Songs of Bright Orange Notes, John Liberatore If only after you then me, Amadeus Reguçera Papalote, Hilda Paredes Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day, Laura Schwendinger

The concert will take place (as usual) at the gorgeous and inspiring Studio 5N, on January 4th, 2020 at 8pm. Suggested donation is $20 ($15 for students) at the door. All proceeds go to the performers. RSVP on the Eventbrite page here or on the Facebook page here!

30th Birthday Concert: “To Celebrate The Need: New Vocal Music,” February 22, 2020 at 8pm

Featuring a brilliant team of performers, this concert/30th birthday party will showcase my compositions for lower voices (including my own voice) and various instruments, including multiple world premieres and the premiere performance of my Whitman cantata The Need of Comrades for its original voice combination of countertenor, tenor, baritone, and piano. The program will include:

· Just A Leaf: Three Natural Songs for voice & piano (2019), texts by Paul Blackburn & William Bronk

· That Will Not Save for TTBB & piano (2019), text by A.E. Housman

· The Second Coming for TTBB & horn (2018), text by W.B. Yeats

· Fresh in the Triumph for voice & piano (2017), after Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

· The Need of Comrades: A Gay Cantata for countertenor, tenor, baritone, and piano (2017), texts by Walt Whitman

Performing in this concert are vocalists James Mitchell Brown, Jason Buckwalter, Ben Hawker, Vince Sandroni, John T.K. Scherch, and Ross Tamaccio; pianists Valerie Hsu and Aaron Thacker; and hornist Shona Goldberg-Leopold.

There is no other venue that would be more fitting for this concert than Studio 5N (302 E, Federal St., Baltimore, MD, 21202), where the concert will be held at 8pm on Saturday, February 22, 2020. A $15 donation at the door is suggested, all proceeds go to the concert’s brilliant musicians. RSVP on the Eventbrite page here and the Facebook event page here!

New Podcast “Pause and Listen” to launch in February 2020 with Peter appearing as a panelist

WBJC Classical DJ (and performer in “To Celebrate The Need”) John T.K. Scherch is launching a new podcast about contemporary composition in February 2020 called “Pause and Listen.” This podcast draws upon Baltimore’s rich array of talented and experienced local classical musicians to discuss showcase and discuss contemporary classical music that they think it important to hear. Last week I participated in a panel alongside longtime collaborator and violinist in the Bergamot Quartet Sarah Thomas and percussionist Christina Manceor. We shared three excitingly different pieces, with Sarah sharing Dan Trueman’s recent Songs That Are Hard To Sing and Christina sharing Elliot Cole's Hanuman’s Leap. I brought to the table one of the recent compositions by Michael Alec Rose, one of my composer teachers from Vanderbilt University. Il Ritorno is a magnificent, challenging, thorny, and beautiful work for solo violin, performed and recorded by Michael’s collaborator, friend, and muse Peter Sheppard-Skærved. You can find the work on Michael’s recent album “Il Ritorno,” available through streaming services, and released by Métier Records. Be sure to look out for the release of the “Pause and Listen” podcast in February, and details about a launch party as soon as I know more!

Hints of Future Projects

This has been a particularly busy season at work (I am the Program & Administrative Coordinator at Arts Education in Maryland Schools, a non-profit that advocates for equitable access to high-quality arts education in all of Maryland’s public schools), so there has been less composing than I’d like, but with progress underway, I am happy to tease a new work for alto saxophone & piano, being composed for brilliant saxophonist Kyle Blake Jones. Only sketches at the moment, but the plan is for a piece of substantial length.

I continue to do further research into new subjects for future operatic treatment, recently some possibilities have floated to the top. More on that if this exposition yields material worth developing!

And look out for more beautiful sounds from Katie Procell this coming fall, as we have a big collaboration up our sleeves!

Thank you to all of you for reading this new experiment in a post-Facebook-profile way of keeping in touch. I am very excited for these upcoming concerts, to see more of you in person again! Please stay in touch and keep warm and hopeful through the months of early sunset and cold winds.

Best,

Peter